A federal grand jury has indicted three officials from a slaughterhouse in northern California that closed earlier this year after being caught processing condemned cattle.

Rancho Feeding Corp. of Petaluma, Calif., was forced in February to recall 9 million pounds of beef sold in Oregon and elsewhere. The plant was shut and ended up being sold. Now the case has moved to the courts.

KQED reported that a federal grand jury has indicted Rancho's co-owner, a foreman and yardman on 11 felony counts, including the distribution of adulterated and misbranded meat, mail fraud and conspiracy.

The indictment says that owners told employees to bypass inspection procedures for cows with signs of eye cancer from mid-2012 until January 2014, according to the KQED story. The indictment alleges that the foreman swapped uninspected cows for cattle that had passed inspection and were awaiting slaughter. The workers slaughtered the sick animals and tossed their heads, placing them with heads from healthy cows to make them appear normal.

Prosecutions over food safety violations are rare but this is not a first. Federal investigators have pursued several cases in recent years, including against the Colorado cantaloupe farmers in the 2011 listeria outbreak that killed 33 people.

And right now top officials from Peanut Corp. of America are on trial in Georgia. The company, which also went out of business, sickened more than 700, including victims in Oregon, in a nationwide salmonella outbreak in 2011. At least nine people died from eating peanut butter crackers and other items with tainted peanuts.